There are two movements in the region, both of which are largely student-led, one in Montenegro, the other in Serbia, and in this review, we will first separate them for the sake of consideration, in order to examine whether there are any points of contact between them.
Under a name that is not easy for me to write, a student movement emerged in Montenegro in response to a major crime that was committed in Cetinje at the very beginning of 2025 and to which an equally major crime was added, also in Cetinje in 2022, but, let us note, there are two other major massacres that are omitted by not mentioning them and simply not taking them into account. The movement, by the way, has the purpose of warning the state about the safety of citizens as one of its very important functions and so far everything is fine with it, unless, of course, we exclude the train accident in Bioč and a private crime in Igalo. And also if we take into account the following circumstance: when we look at the nature and, even more, the origin of the crime itself in Cetinje, we come to a dilemma: since the crime was committed by a person with a psychiatric diagnosis, as stated by the Prime Minister, the dilemma is whether mentally disturbed persons still fall under the jurisdiction of psychiatry as a medically specialized profession, and therefore, first of all, under the jurisdiction of the health service and the Ministry of Health, and only then of the Ministry of Security and the Police. And we will immediately take into account that Montenegrin medicine, by competent experts, 10-15 years ago, was assessed as the last in Europe and that this fact stands as such well before the said crimes. As such, i.e. as an undoubted fact, it will stand even if the existence of a psychiatric diagnosis is, in a given case, still discussed.
The movement is also supported by a certain number of people who do not belong to the student population. I do not know most of them, but I know a group of 4-5 professors from the Faculty of Philosophy very well, and as a retired professor of the same faculty, I would like to point out the following fact about this group.
Namely, ten or twelve years ago, psychology students at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić became vocal, while the professors we just mentioned (and who are notable for their current support of the protests) had taken a repressive stance towards them. At that time, I was the head of the Psychology Department and, for my part, I supported the students, so I was qualified as an instigator of the rebellion by the said professors who had positioned themselves in the faculty administration during that period. In addition to the fact that such a qualification could be taken as a very unfavorable assessment of my intelligence (as the intelligence of a man who cuts the branch on which he sits), we will take into account that the said group, from the position of members of the administration, took a “strike-breaking” stance towards the psychology students and their movement, since it was concluded that the students were on strike. This was a completely wrong qualification, given that the students raised their voices because they were being denied classes, which they, moreover, paid for in the form of tuition fees, since the psychology studies began as self-financing and the transition to the budget, as I was promised, was only in progress; the professors, or rather visiting professors, were on strike with the classes. The visiting professors, formally speaking, were right since their fees were stopped, but, still, I, as their colleague, believe me, was very ashamed of them, because they did not have understanding. And there was even more reason for shame when, after all, and after a few years, we found out how two magnates at the top of the state had "hooked up" and that the one who was in charge of the treasury decided to punish the other who was given authority over the state university and the latter was powerless when it came to fees.
I believe, therefore, that the professors - administrators should have understood and supported the rebellious psychology students instead of condemning them, adding to them the head of the echo chamber. All of this is quite a distant past, but, nevertheless, not so distant that we cannot/should not be surprised at what kind of miracle happened that these same professors - strikebreakers have become their opposite and, here they are, supporting the student rebellion with whom they are not in any way connected in a professional sense, as they were with those ten or twelve years ago. However, there is no miracle in this. The former strikebreakers and professors, with one exception that is difficult to rationally explain, are no longer administrators and, with their current support for us, we must assume, are saying that they would like to be so again and, moreover, are recommending themselves for it, in the event that the old government is re-established in the state which, of course, if it were to return to the saddle, would know how to respect old fighters and veterans.
But, whether it is the old government or the new one, it is a living miracle how much people know how to cling to managerial mandates and want to have more and more of them. Regardless of the fact that social science has undeniably established that this is the cause of retardation and backwardness, mediocrity, managerial mandates are wanted and only wanted. And in doing so, cults of great deans are created for whom, at least here at the Faculty of Philosophy, where I sincerely wish them all the best, occasionally turn out to be very average in an intellectual sense; in some cases, it was even necessary to test their literacy. How corrosive their effect is on both academic selection and academic achievements is difficult to measure even approximately.
We must consider psychology in Montenegro in another sense. In addition to the fact that it is, in one way or another, related to mental health issues and since, among other things, it has been in its pioneering period since its very formation until today, ten to twelve years ago, the day came when, also at the Faculty of Philosophy, a pompous promotion of a book with a very important topic in its title was held. Soon after, a review of that book was written under the title “How to protect psychology in Montenegro from temptation?” And what is most important, a detailed and devastating critical review of the said book, which is identified in the review as a book that smuggles the topic it supposedly discusses, is banned from publication, and its author is treated as a person who is almost outlawed, and all this thanks to the landlord-serf relations that prevail in those parts of the University of Montenegro that are, either professionally or by family ties, connected to the journal “Sociološka luča” as a journal for sociology, cultural anthropology, demography and social psychology (underlined by MS) to whom the text - review was submitted for publication and from whom, moreover, confirmation was received that it would be published. But which, nevertheless, was not published. And which, here, is being offered publicly for publication in the cultural supplement of "Vijesti", in case one wants to demonstrate a clear difference between an emancipated cultural supplement, on the one hand, and a scientific journal that has fallen into tribal backwardness because it was seized and taken under its control by an irrational, arbitrariness of the prince.
So, mental health and mental pathology (as we said at the beginning of this text) on the one hand, and social pathology, as we can see in both "scientific" and publishing production, on the other - that's a topic that I would have to add to the student uprising in Montenegro, if someone were to ask me if I would support it.
As for the comparison of the student movement in Montenegro and that in Serbia, it is possible on condition that the Montenegrin version includes the additions that were discussed earlier. Because the motives for the student movement in Serbia are found primarily in the concept and theory of justice, and in a broader sense in the language of humanistic psychology, which explains justice, truth, goodness, beauty (and self-actualization) as the basis of human nature by which we are all equal, in the event that the aforementioned values are not seriously stopped in their actualization. And so we see that students and pupils in Serbia will no longer listen to the omnipresent ruler - a totalitarian, with whom it may happen that something dangerous will fall on their heads while he, in a silly and, above all, shameless combination of autarchy/autism and sentimentality, rambles on and smuggles the most insipid demagogy whose current purpose is to obscure the "incident" in Novi Sad. I believe that students in Montenegro could also take into account their colleagues from Serbia and, based on this “example of humanity and heroism”, refine their program and their goals. With the verse from “Luce Mikrokozma” that we noticed on one banner - “spark into the dust of death” - I believe that this will happen.
(The author is a retired psychology professor)
Bonus video:
